


Household Hazards

by poison_ivvy



Series: The Brave and the Bold [2]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Getting to Know Each Other, Human Disaster Eddie Brock, M/M, Mindless Fluff, Possessive Behavior, Post-Canon, Protective Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 13:19:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17366591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poison_ivvy/pseuds/poison_ivvy
Summary: In which Eddie could really do without Venom's version of being helpful.





	Household Hazards

The first time he tries to shave, Eddie gets as far as raising the razor to his face before he finds himself inexplicably throwing it straight in the toilet. It’s 8AM on a Tuesday and although the sun is out already, Eddie’s lights are not exactly all on upstairs. Which is why when he stares groggily at the razor, now bobbing cheerfully in the porcelain bowl, he decides that he just doesn’t have it in him to care. Fuck it, a bit of scruff never did anyone any harm, he reasons. And it’s not like he has anyone to impress anyway.

‘THAT’S NO WAY TO THINK, EDDIE,’ Venom growls haughtily, making himself known for the first time since they’d climbed out of bed.

“Oh, and good morning to you too, sunshine,” Eddie mutters. He sloppily splashes his face with tepid water, washing off the now pointless shaving cream. An airy sensation of affection fizzes softly in the pit of his stomach at the endearment, there and gone in the span of a single heartbeat. And then a mostly dry towel from across the bathroom whacks him square across the face, courtesy of a cord of glistening black goo. Eddie wants to feel indignant but it’s hard when he can feel the symbiote snickering at his expense, playfulness palpable in the way the feeling threatens to turn up the corners of his own mouth against his better judgment.

‘IT’S TIME FOR BREAKFAST.’

“Oi!” he splutters helplessly. He paws the towel over his face carelessly as sense memories of salt-sugar-fat-copper flash through his mind, making his mouth water helplessly.

Recovering from the aftermath of the rocket blast had required Venom to ramp up their already rapid-fire metabolism, and as a result the hunger which usually lived in a dark but constant corner of their mind had grown increasingly demanding. And while the extra caloric demands are hardly the worst price to pay for finally feeling whole again, the insatiable feeling of gnawing _need_ makes Eddie feel like he’s constantly on the cusp losing what precious little remains of his sanity.

“Fine, then, what do you want for breakfast?” he asks, making his way into the kitchen.

‘SPLEENS,’ Venom reverberates loudly.  

Eddie rolls his eyes and starts making coffee. He has approximately a million and one fucking emails to sort through following the overwhelming public response to his exposé on the Life Foundation, and he can already tell that today’s going to one of those days when tater tots just don’t cut it. But he sure as shit isn’t going to be doing any of that without adequate caffeination.

“SPLEENS, EDDIE,” Venom whines. “SOFT FRESH BLOODY SPLEENS, WE WANT -”

“Yeah, yeah I get it,” Eddie interjects, shaking his head like a wet dog to quiet the sudden clamoring. “Today’s a Hannibal not a Ramsay kinda day, I feel you. But first things first.”

He feels rather than hears Venom sigh, begrudging acceptance shuddering through his bones. He sits at their rickety kitchen table with a mug of coffee, intending to get some work done while he can. Their afternoon will no doubt be lost to finding a meal ( _FINDING SPLEENS,_ echoes through their mind rather pointedly), and riding out the euphoria of quenched bloodlust that usually left them insensate with a feeling of all-consuming invincibility and wild, animalistic joy.

Venom loves the heady rush of power, waxes poetic about it often enough. Eddie still occasionally curses his inability to close his own eyes and block out the more gruesome details, but the aftermath is what he figures that this is probably what eating a box of donuts powdered with cocaine must feel like. One way or another, neither of them can deny the themselves to the hunger for long.

 So spleens for lunch it is.

 

\---

 

The next morning, Eddie drops half a smashed poptart down his front when he wins the battle to not shove the entire pastry into his mouth at once, much to Venom’s extreme disapproval. The struggle of the poptart in his hand proved to be a diversion, however, and Eddie is barely done smugly chewing before there is a loud popping sound and he turns to find Venom destroying the rest of the box in a gleeful frenzy, inky tendrils swarming the package and consuming the pastries whole.

He spends a full ten minutes searching for something to wipe up the resulting mess up with, but inexplicably finds the entire cabinet under his kitchen sink entirely devoid of cleaning products, which honestly is just typical.  He then spends nearly as much time trying in vain to pick out frosted crumbs from what he’s dismayed to realize is the scruffy beginnings of an actual, honest to god beard. And Eddie decides there and then that if he’s serious about rejoining humanity, he needs to shave.

This time the flimsy plastic of the disposable razor has barely begun to drag its’ way down his jaw before Venom emerges from Eddie’s face like an ink stained ghost, making him shout in surprise and lose his grip.

“Shit,” he curses loudly, swiping at the blood beading up from the neatly sliced skin. “Warn a guy next time, Jesus.”

‘EDDIE YOU ARE BLEEDING,’ Venom’s words echo through his mind as his projection continues to pulse out from Eddie’s skin with a misplaced shadow. ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’

“I was just trying to shave,” Eddie mumbles around the foamy shaving cream. He leans into the mirror, inspecting the small cut as writhing currents of black slither across his face and the wound starts to heal itself in a matter of seconds.

‘ON PURPOSE?’ Venom sounds skeptical, slinking out from under Eddie’s skin so he can see Eddie face to face.  

Eddie stares blankly at the fist sized projection of Venom’s head, baffled. “What? _Yes_ , on purpose!” he protests.

‘USUALLY WHEN YOU WAVE BLADES NEAR YOUR THROAT, IT IS NOT ON PURPOSE,’ Venom says, sounding dubious.

Eddie pauses. “You made me drop that razor in the toilet yesterday, didn’t you?” he asks accusingly. The symbiote’s face doesn’t shift from its’ usual expression of perpetual menace, but a wave of sheepishness flickers across their mind.

“Oh god, and my cleaning shit!” he yelps, finally realizing where his cleaning supplies must have gone.

‘YOU KEPT TOXIC CHEMICALS WHERE WE _EAT._  YOU'RE WELCOME.’ The growl of Venom’s voice is thoroughly unrepentant.

Eddie tries to stifle his laughter and fails. “What exactly did you think I was gonna do, slit my throat with a disposable razor?” he asks.

‘BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY,’ Venom sounds defensive, winding around Eddie’s arm and slowly sinking back into his body. Eddie snorts inelegantly, finding himself oddly charmed and amused in equal measure.

“Well, thanks for looking out, V. But if I don’t shave, I’m going end up growing an actual fucking beard and trust me, neither of us want that,” he says, wetting the razor and starting to shave before one of them gets any more ideas.

 He can feel Venom rifling through memories brought to the surface by the mechanical action of shaving; muscle and mind sparking to summon past recollections of fresh, clean-shaven skin and the 5 o’clock shadow that has accompanied most of his notable hangovers and a string of interchangeably mundane Monday mornings.

‘A BEARD WOULD SUIT US,’ Venom declares sulkily a few minutes later. ‘WE SHOULD HAVE A BEARD, EDDIE.’

“Oh, should we now,” Eddie replies sardonically, patting his face with water as he finishes shaving.

‘WE’D LOOK BETTER WITH A BEARD.”

Eddie doesn’t deign that with a response, but he trusts that his feeling of exasperation is received loud and clear anyway. There is no fucking way he is growing a beard.

So naturally, the next morning Eddie wakes up looking like he’s been marooned on a deserted island for the better part of his life; beard full and hair overgrown after a night of symbiotic supercharging. Venom laughs uproariously through the entirety of Eddie’s ensuing enraged tirade.

(Eddie kind of doesn’t hate what he sees in the mirror, but he insists on shaving again out of sheer spite.)


End file.
